Tolstoy based "Resurrection", the last of his novels, on a true story of a philanderer whose misuse of a beautiful young orphan girl leads to her ruin. Fate brings the two together many years later and the meeting awakens the man's moral conscience. Anger, intimacy, forgiveness, and grace result. While the situation of Tolstoy's plot is alien to most people, his nuanced treatment of mortal life is familiar to all. Late in his life Tolstoy confessed...

Amory Blaine, intent on rebelling against his staid, Midwestern upbringing, longs to acquire the patina of Eastern sophistication. His quest for sexual and intellectual enlightenment at college leads to a series of relationships, until he is cast out of paradise into the frightening labyrinth of the real world.

"Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who's just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina--the tobacco capital of the South--where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolor bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt's glossiest clientele: the wives of the...

When Jamie Paddock learns of his father's suicide, memories of his childhood in West Virginia come roaring back. One of the few people in his town to ever make it out, Jamie's living in New York City now, developing marketing videos for YouTube, struggling to write and partying a lot - all while suppressing the accent that gives him away. Spurred by an artistic curiosity surrounding his silent and private father, Jamie goes home, staying with his...

"[An] epic narrative that begins among immigrants on a failing Wisconsin farm. Chaya and her strange, brilliant, little brother Asher depart for Chicago only to discover that the Gilded Age is as empty a facade as the beautiful Columbian Exposition attracting thousands to Lake Michigan's shore. They scrape together a meager living--she in a cigar factory; he, roaming the city and stealing books and jewelry to share with the poor, until they find different...

"Basil Ransom, an attractive young Mississippi lawyer, is on a visit to his cousin Olive, a wealthy feminist, in Boston when he accompanies her to a meeting on the subject of women's emancipation. One of the speakers is Verena Tarrant, and although he disapproves of all she claims to stand for, Basil is immediately captivated by her and sets about 'reforming' her with his traditional views. But Olive has already made Verena her protégée, and soon...

"First published in 1838, ‘Oliver Twist' is one of the most admired novels by Charles Dickens, an English writer, and social critic. It is the story of a young orphan who dares to say, ""Please, sir, I want some more."" After escaping from the dark and dismal workhouse where he was born, Oliver finds himself on the mean streets of Victorian-era London and is unwittingly recruited into a scabrous gang of scheming urchins. In this band of petty thieves,...

A classic tale of an orphan growing up in the 1800's of England. Intimately rooted in the author's own biography and written as a first-person narrative, "David Copperfield" charts a young man's progress through a difficult childhood in Victorian England to ultimate success as a novelist, finding true love along the way.

War rages, but the women and children of Liverpool's Dr Barnado's Home cannot give up hope. Liverpool, 1941 Haunted by the death of her sister, June Lavender takes a job at a Dr Barnardo's orphanage. June couldn't save Clara from their father's violence, but perhaps she can help children whose lives have been torn apart by war. When June bumps into Flight Lieutenant Murray Andrews on the bombed streets of Liverpool, the attraction is instant. But...